Advantage Way Success Case: Holcim
What you need: Prove the ROI of your training.
Research shows that 85% of all training has zero impact on job performance. So we decided to beat those odds. The Advantage WaySM ensures that you create ROI from every learning initiative. With proof like that, getting executive suite approval for your next learning investment will be a piece of cake.
Issues You’re Facing
- People aren’t motivated to apply new learning back on the job
- Companies don’t know whom to send to what kind of training
- Even when performance improves, learners aren’t coached on ways to keep up the great work
- It’s nearly impossible to connect the dots from training to business impact
How We Can Help
- Maximize the business impact of your learning investment
- Align training to specific business challenges
- Create learners and managers who are involved, committed, and focused before training takes place
- Remove cultural or systemic obstacles that impede learner success back on the job
- Create organization-wide commitment to strategies that reinforce new behaviors after training
- Increase the deployment of leadership training, sales training, business acumen training, and employee performance management initiatives
ADVANTAGE SOLUTIONS: The Advantage WaySM, High Impact Learning, Symphony, Conductor
Challenge
Swiss-based Holcim, Ltd (a leading global supplier of cement and aggregates) created a dedicated North American Learning Center whose initial aim was to launch a leadership development that would:
- develop leaders
- drive the key leadership traits of accountability and execution in areas of major significance to the business
But training had to do far more than build skills that might be forgotten once learners were back on the job. Any corporate training programs that the new Learning Center presented to employees of plants in the U.S. and Canada also had to create measurable business impact. Which is precisely what The Advantage Way process and High Impact Learning methodology were designed to do.
Success Solution
Holcim recognized that great training content was an important ingredient for producing results, but not sufficient in itself. The Advantage Way process demonstrated that actions before and after a training event play as big — if not more of— a role in producing final results as the training event alone.
Advantage Performance Group helped Holcim integrate the Advantage Way process into every aspect of the Center’s inaugural project, Building Leader Performance (BLP).
“To ensure that training and learning are tied to specific business results, BLP implements the High Impact Learning approach designed by Advantage,” explained the Learning Center Manager.
A Success Case evaluation study two months after the leadership training proved that the BLP and High Impact Learning approach implemented at two major plants were paying off with significant results.
From better management of net working capital to efficiency improvements to safety improvements, the study revealed numerous cases where the BLP training had resulted in significant cost savings for the two plants.
“These are important measures of success,” said the Center Manager. “Participants were twice as likely to get effective results if they and their managers followed the High Impact Learning process. For senior managers who want to get better results, the message is simple: ‘Follow the process. The process works!’”